Then Monty broke out in a rash and couldn't get out of bed. I went to visit him, keeping my distance, of course. The rash covered his arms and chest. It didn't look like a rash. It looked like a population map of China, with the highest concentration of red splotches around Bejing, his left shoulder, and Hong Kong, his right nipple. He lay there with a blank expression on his face while a couple of flies buzzed around him. I asked whether there was anything I could get for him.
“I'm fine,” he said. “I'm fine.”
“Try not to die.”
I go away from sick and depressing Monty and got away from the Sunday lonely school and went exploring. The city was drying up. Roads could be traversed. Homeowners no longer had to sleep in tents. As the water went down, the garbage had become all too visible. And there were rats. Rats and the fear of disease. But I had a feeling that the citizens of Ayutthaya would be on their feet again in no time. It was a trait I was beginning to notice among the Thai, even within the first few weeks of my journey; nothing was terribly serious. Not that tragedy was a joke, but there seemed to be a line that I had yet to witness anyone cross, a red zone that was avoided with a smile and a mai pen rai.
I got into a tuk-tuk and got off again at the Jao Prom Market. My first vision was of a girl, sitting behind a grill, frying chicken feet. She watched me as I passed. I noticed her watching me. I noticed her smile. It was a very lovely smile. Then came the fruit stall. Magazine stand, cloth merchant, cassette stand, lottery agent, and another fruit stall. Vendors operated from behind tables, though many got by without. There was one old timer who managed to hang a hardware store from his body. There were screwdrivers along his left arm, key rings around his neck, hammers tied to his belt, wrenches up and down his right arm, hacksaws over his shoulders, and bags full of nails stuck to his buttons. There were even cans of motor oil wedged in his armpits. He walked slowly, head down, smoking a cigarette. A professional. Nothing on him jangled.
Further in, beneath a low wooden roof, were the bread sellers, T-shirt vendors, locksmiths, chinaware dealers, men selling rabbits, women selling knives, and entire families dealing in plasticware. The smoke in the air came from grills frying birds and fish and little round pork balls, which were served four on a stick. Down below, the sidewalk ran with whatever excess was being drained at the moment, be it blue, pink, or a toxic green. The sellers stood in open toed sandals while dogs slept in the dry patches of shade. Children with unwiped mouths sat upon pieces of wood that had been nailed together for the day. At least they were safe.
There was music. There was music coming from fifty different radios, blaring fifty different songs. No one seemed particularly bothered by the racket. Most pretended not to hear it at all.
I took another turn and ended up in Death Row; a long run of blood soaked tables that sat under a sick cheese light. Pig entrails hung from wires like Christmas tree lights from hell. The remainders; feet, stomachs, livers, and heads, sold below. The heads sat looking at me. I mean they still had eyes and worse – eyelashes. Behind them stood a woman hacking up slabs of meat with a cleaver. She was fat like her pigs once were and her arms jiggled as the meat slithered and danced on the chopping block. BANG! BANG! It was hypnotizing, the way she went at it. Until I began to imagine myself down there, two feet long, held by the wrists, jerking and squirming as that blade came down around me. BANG! Those fat arms shaking like pudding and everything dripping with blood and grease around me. I covered my nose and mouth and got out of there.
Back outside. Back to the pretty girl sitting next to her grill of chicken feet. It was a relief to see her. Although she too had a hand in death, she had such a nice smile that the blood became candy and the dead chickens got up and danced and all the corpses of all the animals in the market sprouted flowers and sang “O Happy Day.” It was there in the smile of the chicken foot girl.
Once I had completed my rounds, I decided to backtrack and find something to eat. I went back to the noodle shop and pointed to different vegetables and said the word for chicken that I had studied and learned because goddam if I were going to live in Thailand and get through my days pointing at all that I wanted. I sat down on a plastic stool at a metal table and spaced out watching an old woman brush flies from her tray of sausages with a plastic bag tied to the end of a stick. So this was my world now. It beat some things. It beat a lot of things. But I had to learn the ropes. I had to be more than some whitebread fool gawking at The Way Some People Live. I didn't want to serve in heaven, nor did I want any position of importance in hell. I just wanted to breathe for a change.
“Hello, Mister John.”
“Whassat?”
Two women held their hands in front of them, waiing me. “Sawadee ka,” they said in unison. I quickly returned the motion. It turned out they were teachers from my school, Miss Wanida and Miss Sucheeda. Miss Wanida was older, with a round, cartoonish face that was instantly likable. Miss Sucheeda's face was likable as well. In fact, it was one of the faces that had made me dizzy with love at the early morning teachers meeting the day before. Miss Sucheeda was slightly taller than the average Thai, and her nose was a bit longer. She had long, black hair that fell in curls over her shoulders and back. And when she smiled, it was like the sun had come down to foxtrot.
“Do you like Thai food?”
“Oh, yes.”
They said something to each other, then Miss Sucheeda smiled at me and said, “You very handsome.”
“No, I'm not handsome.”
One of the girls working the noodle stand brought me my lunch. She stood staring for a moment, said a word, a single word, then walked away.
“She say you very handsome too,” said Miss Sucheeda.
Miss Wanida nodded. It was unanimous. I was handsome. The two of them waiied again and went along their way. The shadow of a dog moved out from underneath the table next to mine and staggered in the opposite direction.
I brushed a pair of flies making love off my noodles and dug in.
§
With Monty sick in bed and my mystery roommate traveling in India, Madam Gamonwan and Company came to the conclusion that I was lonely. They couldn't have been further off the mark. Nevertheless, I agreed to a field trip conducted by Sangwan, Newt, Yai, Rot, and another teacher whose name I forgot upon hearing. We all got into a giant white car that looked like the thrown in part of a deal. You know, “I'll give you five hundred dollars, plus my stereo, and all you have to do is kill my wife. And tell you what, I'll even throw in the car.” It was a monster of a vehicle, rusted, torn apart, and welded together again. The thing looked as if it could break through concrete, then drop its engine on a pebble. Yai got in and looked at me out the window.
“Driving,” she said.
I was guided into the passenger's seat while the rest of the women squeezed in back. Rot had to sit on Yai's lap. The vehicle took some time to start. “Naam dtuem ,” explained Yai. Naam dtuem meant flood. I didn't need a dictionary. I had heard the words at least three hundred times since my arrival. It was an observation, an explanation. It was the state of one's being. And when it rained, the words on everyone's lips were “fon tok,” it's raining. I didn't know what a cultural scientist would make of this gift for the obvious, but it did give us all something to agree upon.
The engine finally started.
The first place we visited was a temple called Wat Mongkonbophit. I was told in broken, unsalvageable English that one week ago, the Wat had to be closed due to the rising water. It must have been true because the bases of the stone walls and monuments were discolored for two feet above the muddied ground. The highlight of the Wat was three giant stone spirals that sat one next to the other. Sangwan explained their history to me in Thai. The only words I understood were “Burma” and “no good,” which Yai chipped in to clarify matters. The story was probably interesting, but for the moment, the why's and what for's hanging in the air gave the place a certain mystery. Like maybe aliens built it.
Inside a great ornamental palace sat a colossal golden Buddha. We took off our shoes and got down on our knees before the ceremonial altar, where incense burned and flowers hung and candles flickered. I kept my eyes on the teacher next to me, the one whose name I didn't know. She placed her folded hands to her forehead and bowed all the way down to the floor where she waiied three times. She then returned to her original position and rested her hands at her side. I followed the example, not wanting to offend anyone present, Buddha included.
From there, we wandered through a line of souvenir shops that lay off to the side. Women unfolded long strips of postcards and men held up colorful hammocks before my eyes. Only mine. None of the sellers seemed interested in my Thai escorts.
“Hello! Special price just for you!”
“You! You! Thai souvenir!”
“Just looking mister! Cheap! Cheap!”
I bought a couple of postcards and a wooden elephant that I planned to send home. After that, the teachers took me back to the school, apparently satisfied that my loneliness was cured.
§
The next day, Sangwan was again at my door. At first, I thought she wanted to take me to another temple. Until I noticed her clothes. She was a mess.
“Chooay!” she said. “Chooay!”
This time, I was prepared. I handed her a Thai dictionary and made her look up the word chooay. It took her a long time to find. Maybe, I thought, Sangwan couldn't spell. But then she smiled and pointed to it with a short, dirty finger.
H E L P.
“Has there been an accident?” I asked. Sangwan didn't – couldn't – answer. Jesus! Someone could be pinned beneath a blackboard and here we were screwing around with vocabulary. I put on my sandals and followed her to the front of the school. No, no one was in any danger. It was spotlight time again.
This time, at least, I wasn't on stage. All the teachers had gathered for repair work on the school. Sandbag walls that had been built to keep out the flood (unsuccessfully), had to be dismantled and carted away. That was the man work. The women work consisted of dirt removal. They worked in teams of three. One woman shoveled the dirt into a rubber basket while two others carried it away. The women laughed and sang as they worked. The one doing the shoveling had to be careful not to overload the basket.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and applauded when I showed up. I moved to where the six men were working and joined their line. A tough looking fellow stood on top of the wall, hoisting sandbags to the man at the front of the queue. Then he hoisted it to the next in line, and so on until the last man placed it in a wheelbarrow. When the wheelbarrow was full, two women pushed it away for unloading. Simple. Except each time a sandbag passed hands, everyone in line said “Ho!” whether a sandbag was being hoisted to him or not. We sounded like a battalion of evil Santas come to ruin Christmas.
After fifteen minutes of playing sandbag toss, my shoulders hurt like hell. The fat sun was making me crazy as well as hot, and when I saw Miss Sucheeda, shoveling dirt into a rubber basket, I wanted to run over and show her my muscles. I didn't have very big muscles, but I was dirty. I even bled from a small cut on my right index finger. Perfect! I could show her that I was no Nancy-boy, too delicate to work the land when it needed to be worked. As the men rested and drank sugary fruit punch, I walked to where Sucheeda was shoveling. She wore a blue work shirt and a wide, straw woven hat on her head. Everything about her was lovely, lovely. She smiled when she saw me.
Then the inevitable happened. The teacher named Yai had her video camera in hand and wanted to get a few scenes of the white man who came to help save our school. Before Sucheeda could spit into a handkerchief and wipe clean my dirty mouth, I was back in the line with the Ho-Ho boys, throwing dead weight sandbags and singing our stupid song. Yai got it all on tape.
The work went on for another hour and a half, when it became obvious that the sun wasn't going to show any mercy. Sucheeda and the rest of the women were hustled off to a meeting while the men sat in the shade and smoked cigarettes.
I kicked a sandbag that had fallen from the wheelbarrow and went on home.
§
It was slowly dawning on me that the school in which I lived and was soon to be employed was not like the world outside its gates. There was a strange politeness of manner and speech that I couldn't quite put my finger on, yet was constantly aware of. It was as if a funeral were going on in the next room and no one wanted to say anything or make a move for fear of offending relatives of the deceased. Only there was no next room, and as far as I could tell, no one was dead.
Once Monty was out of bed and on his feet, the teachers wanted to chaperone us to a nearby city where there was something to see, Lord knows, and we'd all have to wake up at five a.m. to be on time to see it. Five a.m.? I had been raised in a house of fast mornings. There was no lazing about for an hour or two, drinking coffee and relaxing. I believe that was one of my main reasons for leaving. I needed to start each day without faces and voices and clocks. And when I did have to get up early, I made sure to get up earlier, just to have that precious time between dreaming and waking.
I told Monty to take this trip without me.
That night, I stayed up late reading the guidebook and fell asleep sometime after two. In my dreams, a horde of zombies had woken from the dead and surrounded the house. They beat on the front door and called my name in the moonlight.
“Yoo Hoo! Jo-ohn!”
It wasn't the living dead. It was Sangwan and her merry band standing outside my screen door, shouting for me to wake up.
Five a.m., on the dot.
Those bitches, I thought. They're trying to make me get out of bed. I buried my face in the pillow and waited for them to go away. They didn't go away. They opened the front door and came in.
Fifteen minutes later I was sitting closer to Monty than I ever wished to be, speeding along the highway in the giant white clown car, Yai behind the wheel, Sangwan, Rot, and Newt, and the one whose name I forgot, in back.
“I don't know if you're interested, but I'm currently on page two hundred of The Koran. I can let you borrow it when I'm done.”
“Monty, why didn't you tell them I didn't want to come? Why did you let them bang on my door at five in the morning?”
“Well, I'm thinking about converting to Islam and I was meditating when they came to get you.”
There was something peculiar in the air.
“What is that smell?”
“I believe that's the one hundred percent virgin olive oil.”
I was afraid to ask.
“Why, O Monty, do I smell one hundred percent virgin olive oil?”
“Because,” he answered. “I shave off all my body hair and coat myself with it three times a day. You see, I have certain skin problems caused by the heat and by using the olive oil –”
“Did it ever occur to you that filling your sweat glands with the stuff might be the cause of your skin problems?”
“No.”
I readjusted myself in the front seat.
“What's with you, Monty? You're an intelligent guy. You read, you remember things. Why do you act so damn bizarre?”
“What seems bizarre to you may actually be normal to other people.”
“Yes, you're right, Monty. I sometimes forget there are communities where people periodically shave their body hair and coat themselves with olive oil just before rolling a dice to determine what religion they'll convert to that day.”
We arrived at our destination at two hours past dawn. There was a traffic jam of cars stretching along a wide road that cut through a field. Instead of waiting, Yai pulled to the side of the road and let us out to walk the rest of the way. In the distance was a huge gathering of people. Large speakers were set up playing the theme from “Star Wars” over and over again. It didn't take long to figure out what was going on.
“An eclipse!” I said. “That's what we came to see? An eclipse?”
It was some crowd. Thai families were camped out on large square mats, eating, drinking, really whooping it up. Kids shot off bottle rockets and ran about in their green and red eclipse glasses. In the middle of it all sat a woman, cross-legged, fingers carefully positioned, and chanting. She wasn't Thai. She had long blond hair and thin eyebrows drawn over a skin-tight face. Her lips were barely visible and her mouth reminded me of the hole in a powdered sugar donut.
“Hey, Monty,” I said. “Look over there. Is that what you do in the mornings? Maybe you should go over and introduce yourself.”
“I'm not supposed to talk to her while she's meditating.”
A little Thai boy blew off a firecracker close to the chanting girl. She opened her eyes and screamed. “GET AWAY FROM ME!”
“There,” I said. “She's not meditating anymore. Go over and ask what she's doing here.”
“Okay, okay.”
Monty went over to where the girl was sitting. I moved in close enough to hear. Monty said hello and started to speak his monkey-language. The girl looked at him with angry, bad karma eyes.
“Excuse me!” she snapped, interrupting his dialogue. “I'm surrounded by a circle of rune stones and you're DISRUPTING my ENERGY FIELD!”
“Sorry!”
Monty quickly exited her energy field. He must have stepped on one of her magic rocks because she untangled herself to fetch something in the grass and called him an oaf as he walked away.
“She didn't want to talk to me,” he said.
“I noticed.”
§
The eclipse went off well. Rockets and bombs exploded around us. In Thai folklore, an evil spirit, not the moon, was responsible for swallowing the sun. All the explosions and noise were meant to drive him away, and bring luck, of course. I'd soon learn that the Thai did very little if it didn't involve bringing luck. There were a few minutes, however, when we were all standing in a half-light while the moon – or the evil spirit – got the better of the sun. Sangwan and Yai watched through pieces of shaded plastic. I looked for a second, then made the rest up in my head. As the day began to return, people flocked to their cars to get a jump on everyone else. We walked back to the white beast and made it onto the highway without too much of a wait.
“Hue kao reu yang?” asked Yai.
Hungry? I hadn't eaten a thing all morning. I answered in the affirmative. Yai took an exit no more than fifteen minutes from our viewpoint. I saw a sign: LOPBURI 1.
“Lopburi,” I said. “We're going to Lopburi? That's where all the monkeys live.”
“Monkey,” said Sangwan.
“Many monkey,” said Yai.
We ate at a small restaurant with a television turned up loud. What was it with the noise? People didn't seem to be able to relax unless there was some machine blaring sound at them. After the meal, we walked down the street. The first monkey I noticed was hanging from a telephone wire above the street. It looked down on us as we passed underneath.
“These things don't attack,” I said. “Do they?”
The main gathering took place at a Wat near the end of the road. I wasn't prepared for the number of monkeys present. There must have been a thousand of them. There were baby monkeys, mama monkeys, and big fat “in heat” monkeys with bright red butts. The damn things weren't afraid of us. When I kneeled down to get a look at one sitting in the grass, another took a running start, jumped on my back and sprang off again just as fast. Jesus! We were playthings to them.
Monty gave me his camera and crouched down the way I had done. I suppose he wanted a monkey to run up his backside too. I pointed the camera in his direction and waited. It was only seconds before a good-sized monkey leapt upon his shoulder and off again. Only this one had Monty's glasses in its dirty little paw.
“Hey, Monty,” I said. “That monkey took your glasses. Don't worry. I got it all on film.”
“Would you mind helping me get them back?”
The teachers had already formed a line to cut off his escape. Monty and I approached slowly from the other end. The monkey placed the pair of glasses between its teeth and looked at us innocently. It could have been a hairy little child, if not for the teeth and claws.
“Now don't scare it.”
Monty moved in and took hold of his glasses. A brave move. I wouldn't have done it. The monkey refused to let go. One of his buddies ran over to spring off Monty's backside. Then another. It was an assault. “Oh!” said Monty. “Oh! You naughty monkeys!”
I quickly raised the camera and got off a couple of shots before the monkey bolted from our circle and disappeared in the pack. Monty held up his glasses. They were broken clean in half. The teachers looked on helplessly. Monty turned to them, still stinking of virgin olive oil.
“Go home?” he said. “Now?”
“Okay,” said Yai.
It wasn't easy keeping a straight face on the long drive home.
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